Scattered Pieces
by Der schwarze Prinz
Summary: A series of short story segments about all Gallagher sibling duos. #15 "Beholding" with Debbie & Fiona "From afar, Fiona looks like a goddess [...]"
1. Picture (Lip & Fiona)

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, not Shameless, nor other mention Pop cultural references or quotes.  
_

_Author´s Note:__ The idea for this short story just popped up into my head. I´m trying to write a shot for every possible Gallagher sibling combination (minus Sammie), but I don´t want it to sound forced, so it might take some time to write them. _

_This piece takes place after the season 9 finale. I just needed to wrap it up a little more._

_**Special Thanks got to "**lemondrizzlecake**" for beta reading.**  
_

**Picture  
**_Fiona & Lip_

He doesn´t like to admit the fact that it takes time to adjust. Adjust to life without her constantly being there. It has something to do with the walls he built long ago, or the fact that he tries to pretend that he´s still mad at her and not deeply worried, but in the end it´s just like this: it takes time to adjust.

He makes breakfast, repairs bikes and pretends he´s fine, because somehow that makes him feel fine. Not great, but okay. Fine. He can deal with it being like that.

Liam took it hard, Debbie´s burying herself in work and Carl´s got his head in his papers from one military academy to another to find one that might not reject him, but he does not judge, has long ago learned that he shouldn´t, because the shit going on affects everyone differently, plus Fiona's been more like a mother for them than a sister, while all in all Lip just sees her as that.

So it takes a while for him to adjust, to figure out how to be. It takes no time to rebuilt the walls – he´s damn good at building them, he´s always been – and though he knows he should feel guilty, he doesn´t. Debbie's giving him looks every now and then that make him uncomfortable, because he doesn´t know if she blames him or if she´s worried about him and he wants to call her out, but he doesn´t. Because truth is, he hasn´t adjusted yet, and going into a fight with her might crack his walls.

So instead he lies awake at night more often than not, smokes more than ever and tries to hush away every memory to come. No more Fiona. Gone. No more Monica. Gone. No more Karen or Mandy or Helene. Gone, gone, gone. If he´s lucky, Tami´s sticking around, but even if he wishes so, he doesn´t hope for it.

It´s in the middle of the night, and Liam had a nightmare – he hadn´t had any of them for a long time, and maybe it is because Fiona´s gone. Lip wants to tell himthat he´s too old for crawling into his bed like a little kid, but he sorta likes the warmth Liam brings with him, the steady breathing and the energy he has, twisting around all the time in his sleep.

It´s the first time since he took Liam with him to college that they´re that close, and he tries not to think about the fact that he´s just the filler, that what Liam really wants is Fiona.

But Fiona´s gone and it´s for good. It is good, and Lip´s fine. Except that he can´t sleep.

He takes a look at the clock. 01:34. He counts sheep. 01:42. Turns around on his stomach and closes his eyes. 01:49. He gets up, puts on his shoes and goes for a smoke on the front porch. Gets back inside, lying back down again. 02:13. Closes his eyes, drowses off, snaps awake. 02:14. Damn it.

He´s up in a second, takes one last glance at Liam's sleeping form and gets out of bed again – this time even sneakier than before. He doesn´t put his shoes on, closes the bedroom door behind him and heads for the attic. He bites his lip when he tries to get the ladder down without waking anybody, but miraculously no one even stirs and he climbs up to the attic.

It takes some time to find the switch to turn on the light and when he does, it´s so freaking bright, he almost tumbles down the stairs again, but he can catch himself the second before he falls.

"Fuck."

His right palm throbs and he realizes that he cut himself with a splintered wooden beam. The odds are in his favor. In the dimmed light of the attic he tries to evaluate the damage done to his palm and deems it not deep but messy. Not wanting to go back down to get something to stop the slight bleeding, he looks around and finds some of Liam's old baby clothes. He takes one of the tiny shirts and wraps it around his hand, straightens up – not too much, so he would not hit his head in addition – and evaluates his surroundings.

It takes a while until he finds what he´s been looking for.

In one of the corners is a pile with old photo albums, and somehow the memory just strikes him.

He´s about thirteen, Fiona´s barely eighteen and she´s putting together this stupid album. Frank never bothered to do so, and Monica was barely ever organized enough for it, but Fiona had just begun to find it oddly calming.

"Why you´re doing that?"he´d asked her. "It´s not like our lives are worth remembering."

She´d shot him a glance that was something between sad and furious. "It´s worth for me", she had said.

"I don´t think it´s healthy", he´d said. "I find it rather strange. You´re not old enough to dwell on awful memories."

Instead of getting sad or angry she had just smiled. "But imagine you bring your first girl home. I´m sure she would love to see tiny Lip without his front teeth. And now I know exactly where to look for that." She´d held the picture up, so he could see his younger self smiling in the camera – indeed with two missing teeth.

"Don´t worry. Never going to bring a girl into this mess", he had said and Fiona had just stuck her tongue out at him.

"Never say never", she´d sung.

He smiles at the memory, then stumbles forward and takes the first album in his hands.

It´s not like there are that many pictures, but somehow there are just enough to get a glimpse at how each of them grew from tiny to terrible before someone's eyes. It takes a while to find what he´s looking for because the pictures start with the newest and end with a wedding picture of Monica and Frank, but after a while, he´s holding it in his shaky hands.

It must be one of the rare times Frank took a picture of a family member, because it´s a little blurry, but Lip pretends that their father was shaking out of excitement and not withdrawal.

It´s a picture taken at the hospital right after his birth.

When he was younger, Lip would sometimes be proud to be the only Gallagher sibling being born at an actual hospital, not in the kitchen or a car or the pavement in front of the hospital, but in a comfy room with a clean bed and a nurse.

And instead of showing the newborn with the – probably wasted – mother, the person holding him in the picture is his older sister. Fiona's arms are rather thin and she looks really pale, but she holds the tiny baby steady like she´s shielding him from all the bad in the world. A symbol of what she would do for the next eighteen years and more.

His heart aches, but he cannot keep himself from smiling. He carefully takes the picture out of the album with his not bleeding hand, stumbles back to the ladder, turns off the light and gets back down.

He takes some time, cleaning the cut on his hand, than he sneaks back into his room, relieved to see Liam still asleep.

He fumbles with his pillowcase to shove the photo inside, climbs back into bed and falls asleep in no time.

~break~

He starts to take his time to adjust. He makes breakfast, repairs bikes and doesn´t act like he needs to pretend he´s fine. He knows he doesn´t have to. The walls are up, and if they´re not he just sneaks into his room, takes the picture out of the pillow case and stares at it for a while.

Life goes on, the world turns around, Carl talks about guns again, Liam about school and Debbie buys a Polaroid to take pictures of Franny. He goes to appointments with Tami. Every Sunday he calls Ian and he learns how to ride a bike without constantly crashing to the ground. And then, one day, he just walks up into his room and takes out the shoe box under his bed.

It´s what he calls, The Old Phillip, and even if he knows he´s never going back to be that, he likes having his old self sitting there, safely under the bed, not quiet gone, but silent.

He opens it and looks at the insides, carefully taking out one item at a time, weighting it in his hands. There´s his high school diploma, his AA chips, and a copy of Brave New World. He opens the book, flips through it till the very end. "Did you eat something that did not agree with you?"asked Bernard, He reads. The savage nodded. "I ate civilization."

He takes one last look at the picture, the tiny brown haired girl with the tiny, strong arms and the even tinier baby, then he puts it right within the open pages of the book, closes the copy and puts it back into the box. Carefully he lays back all the other items, closes the box and shoves it under the bed again. "When she comes back", he thinks. "I can take it out again."

_Author´s Note:_

_I hoped at least someone liked this.  
_

_Please leave a review, and tell me what you thought. Constructive criticism is welcome. If you wish for another "oneshot", you can also comment. You can choose between "Red" (Ian & Debbie) or "Sleepless" (Carl & Liam).  
_

*quote taken directly from: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)


	2. Red (Ian & Debbie)

**_**Thanks for the reviews and follows. As lemondrizzlecake wished, here´s the oneshot (it´s not really a "oneshot") **__Red__** about Ian and Debbie. This one takes place mostly before the show started. But you´ll see yourself. It´s also a little cheesy. Couldn´t help it. **_**

**Disclaimer:**_** I own nothing, all rights belong to Showtime. **_

**Many thanks to ****lemondrizzlecake ******for beta reading this story.****

**Red**

_Ian & Debbie_

They say you should not judge a book by it's cover, but Ian has to admit that he only started to like Debbie once her baby hair had bleached out and turned into the same colour as his.

He funnilly enough he remembers it well, though he was only four when Debbie was born. Going on five, he'd proudly told the taxi driver. They didn't make it into the hospital, though, Debbie was born on the freaking pavement in front of the building, but everyone was happy, especially his parents. He remembers them laughing a lot, and even though Lip claims it was because of the pills they'd been popping, Ian honestly thinks it was because of the baby, and he was happy, too.

For a few hours, that' is it, until happiness turned into chaos.

Thing is, Ian did not know that babies were so freaking loud. Little Debbie cried and cried day and night, and her face turned so red, that Ian thought her head might explode. His might as well, because he wa's getting a headache from the constant crying. And the worst thing was, that the crying let Debbie get all the attention.

When she was barely a week old he managed to learn how to do a handstand.

So Ian ran into the kitchen and pickeds at his mother's trousers. "Mum, Mum,", he called her, but she couldn't hear him, because the baby was crying — and she was crying, too. He didn't like that, didn't like seeing his mother cry, because she should be strong and happy and proud because he could now do a handstand at only four, going on five. But she just swiped his hands away and shook her head. "Don't, Ian, the baby needs me."

Somewhere in his heart he felt this sting. Later, he'll remember this as the first time he felt that sting, though certainly not the last.

He went to see Fiona, instead. "I can do a handstand", he proudly told her.

"Is it safe to do so?", she just asked. He nodded. "Don't you wanna see?"

But she didn't, because she was too busy making sure a passed out Frank didn't drown in his own puke.

Ian went to see Lip next, but his brother had his head buried in a book. "Gonna be a first grader soon, better start to learn reading," Lip said.

"Did I cry that much, too, when I was a baby?"

That made Lip look up.

"How shall I remember? I was a toddler."

"But she makes Mummy cry, too."

"Monica cries a lot. I think she likes crying." Ian wasn't so sure about that.

Baby Debbie, however, surely liked crying a lot, because she didn't stop. And, when she was a month old, Monica was crying again, standing in the doorway.

"I've gotta go, Frank. That baby makes me go crazy. She cries so much. None of the other kids cried that much."

Now Frank was crying, too, begging her to stay, but it was no use. She was gone in a heartbeat. Fiona said it wasn't the first time, but it was the first time Ian remembered. Frank said she'd come back.. Buut Ian wasn't so sure.

_~break~_

He'd turned five already and Debbie was over three months old when she finally stopped crying that much.

They were all in the kitchen, and Fiona was teaching them how to change a diaper.

Lip had already done a great job, and it was Ian's turn, but he didn't want to.

"She should do it herself,", he mumbled with a pout.

"Stop being an idiot, Ian. She's a baby, she can't to it. I already changed you guys all the time, I want some help, this time."

But he refused, and Fiona ended up putting the baby to sleep not much later.

Lip was the one who noticed it first, stroking through the baby's hair. "Look Ian, her hair is turning red, lately. Like yours."

He took a look and, as hard as it was to admit so, Debbie's hair really was shining red, lately.

"I thought, I'd be the only redhead", he mumbled to himself, but he was secretly pleased.

Two hours later, Fiona had fallen asleep on the couch. The baby was wet, but she wasn't crying, and so Ian pulled out a diaper and tried to remember what their older sister had shown them earlier that day.

It took some time and three diapers to get the job done, but in the end - the baby was's clean.

He smiled proudly at himself, and suddenly he was placing a kiss on Debbie's forehead. Maybe she wasn't that bad, after at all.

Monica returned a week later. She was happy again and bought him a bike, and he didn't even have to share it with Lip.

Years later though, he'll teach Debbie how to use it.

~break~

He's eleven when he returns home with a bleeding nose.

It's the third time this month and all he wants is for Fiona not to see, because she would only be worried. Instead he sneaks up into the bathroom, wets a cloth and tries to stop the bleeding before she comes home.

"What are you doing?"

He turns around in shock, only to see Debbie standing in the doorway. She has her puppet in her arms and looks at him curiously.

"Isn't it obvious?", he says, leaning his head back,. "I've got a nosebleed."

"Don't do that!" she screams so suddenly that she startles him, d and he lets the cloth fall down.

"What?"

"I saw it on TV. If you lean your head back while your nose is bleeding, all the blood flows back into the head and that's bad."

He stares at her dumbfounded and she gives him one of those looks that she lately became really good at. It tells him not to mess around with her.

So he leans his head forward instead. "Any more tips, nurse Debbie?"

She doesn't answer, instead she wets another two cloths, gives him one for his nose and thean climbs on the bathtub next to him and puts the second on his neck.

"You saw that on TV, too?"

She nods.

They sit in silence for a while, both watching as the cloth for his nose slowly turns red.

Ten minutes later, the bleeding has stopped and Ian doesn't feel lightheaded, either.

"That was good, nurse Debbie", he says. She smiles at him.

"Better clean that up,", she says hopping off the bathtub. "Red is awfully agressive in the washing machine."

He frowns, confused, looking after her as she exits the bathroom.

~break~

The memory comes back to him much later, when he sits on the same bathtub in the same room years later, dying his hair black.

He runs his hand through the dark mess and smiles sadly. He always liked his red hair. Felt like it made him special. But he's changed and Debbie has, too. He smiles though. She will carry it on, their colour. Already did with Franny. He takes a last glance at his new self in the mirror, then leaves.

_**Thanks for reading. I would be greatfull if you´d left a review, tell me what you think**_**. **

_**Next up will be **__Sleepless __**with Carl & Liam.**_


	3. Sleepless (Carl & Liam)

_**Okay, so here´s the next chapter/oneshot of this series. **_

_**Disclaimer:**** I own nothing. **_

_**Special Thanks go to **lemondrizzlecake **for beta reading. **_

**Sleepless**

_Carl & Liam_

It´s pitch black outside and the only sound he can hear is the hushed voices downstairs.

He knows it´s Vee and Kev talking, and it should actually make him feel safe, but for the first time in a long while, Carl can´t sleep.

He lays awake in the dark, turned to his side, and looks at the empty bed right under his. The sheets lie around messily and there´s the stuffed rabbit waiting for its owner sitting on the floor beside the bed. Carl sighs and turns around again, but no matter how tired he is, he can´t sleep.

He pretends though, when the door opens and probably Vee or maybe Kev are poking their head in to see if he´s fine. Of course he isn´t, but then, who is?

He remembers when he was younger, around five or six, and he had trouble sleeping, too. Nightmares would wake him up in the middle of the night, or the noise of Monica and Frank fighting would make it impossible to sleep. But back then he would be able to tiptoe into Fiona's room to crawl into her bed, or he would listen to Lip and Ian talk in the dark, even if they thought he would not hear them under the earmuffs they made him wear. And later, even now with them all gone, he still had Liam's breathing to focus on, whenever he wasn't able to sleep.

But Liam´s in the hospital now, and he heard them all talk about how he may be permanently damaged, whatever that´s supposed to mean.

So Liam's in the hospital and Lip's there, too. Ian´s who knows where and Fiona is in prison and he doesn´t even know if Debbie´s home with them. It´s strange how he feels lonely for the first time in his life.

_~break~_

He´s at the hospital because he promised Lip and Vee to be there, but he doesn´t really like it here. It´s late and he feels like he should sleep, but everyone is so busy here, and it´s noisy and bright, so instead he just sits on one of the chairs and tries not to think about Liam hooked up to all those machines.

Thing is, he knows he´s supposed to watch him. That´s how it works. Fiona always looked out for all of them, Lip looked out for Ian, Debbie, Liam and him, Ian looked out for the youngest three and Debbie took care of him and Liam if needed.

All he had to do was look out for Liam and it feels like he failed. He knows Lip blames Fiona, and Ian and Debbie blame Robbie. He also knows that Fiona probably blames herself, even though she calls it an accident. He doesn´t blame any of them.

Liam´s his little brother, too. The only little sibling he's got. And he failed him.

He knows people tend to think he doesn´t care or has no heart. He knows better. He doesn´t need people to know, because he knows himself how much he loves his little brother.

So when the nurse tells him to go home, he does not refuse. He does not refuse because it won´t change a thing for sleeping Liam if he himself is not sleeping, by his side or elsewhere.

_~break~_

Some part of him was really sure he would sleep better once Liam got home.

It´s utterly depressing that he was wrong. He lays awake again, watching Liam every minute as if he´d disappear the next moment. Carl knows he should get some rest, but even now that Liam's back, the house is too quiet and something feels off.

He thinks about what the doctors said. That maybe there will be permanent damage. Carl´s not completely sure what that means, but he knows it´s his job to help Liam through. Because his job is to look out for him. He can´t fail this time.

_~break~_

Carl can count the times he had a sleepover on one hand. That´s what he pretends it is, when Lip takes them to stay in the dorm with him. The floor is hard, even with the thin mattress they´re sleeping on, and someone is always talking, yelling, or laughing outside the room. But for the first time in quite a while Carl´s sleeping like a baby.

And when he wakes up in the morning, strangely recovered, he knows it´s not because of the noises or the hard floor, nor because of Lip hovering over them in the bed next to him.

He knows it´s because of the tiny form of his little brother pressed against his side. He won´t tell anybody, though. It might ruin his reputation.

_**Please leave a review and tell me what you think. You can also vote on which oneshot should be uploaded next: **Bulletproof (Debbie & Carl), Truth (Liam & Fiona) or Cerberus (Ian & Lip)_


	4. Cerberus (Ian & Lip)

_**Since no one wished for anything, I decided to upload "Cerberus".**_

**Disclaimer:****_I own nothing and nothing do I own._**

**_Many thanks to _**_lemondrizzlecake _**_for beta reading and reviewing._**

**Cerberus**

_(Ian & Lip)_

Lip has always been good at making up stories.

When they were younger, Ian always imagined Lip's brain as a carnival, with something stunning to be found at every other corner and a firework every now and then.

To be honest, Ian was a little jealous, 'cause his brain would barely hold up to Lip's, and sometimes it even seemed to be stuck and not working at all and it would be intimidating to stand next to his brother.

Most of the time, however, Ian would benefit from Lip's brain, especially from his stories and the games he'd invent, so Ian shrugged the jealousy off.

His favorite was the story of Cerberus.

He was about seven or eight and Lip somewhere about nine, and Fiona had taken the younger kids out. He was sitting on his bed, trying to do his homework, when Lip popped down next to him.

"You wanna go on an adventure?" he'd asked.

Ian looked up. "Where to?"

"The underworld," Lip said with a vicious smile on his face, and even though Ian had no idea what he meant his heart hammered in his chest.

"Why?" he wondered.

"To get the treasure," Lip answered, like it was the stupidest question in the world.

"What treasure?"

Lip simply took his hand and led him to the staircase in the living room. There, the two of them sat down on the stairs and peered through the handrail.

"So where's this treasure?" , Ian asked, impatient.

Lip pointed his fingers to the room downstairs. "In the cupboard under the TV, but Cerberus is watching it. He will eat us when he finds out that we want to steal it!"

"Cere- what?"

"The three-headed hound, that watches the gates of the underworld," Lip had lowered his voice, able to sound threatening and creepy, and it sentd a chill down Ian´s spine. "If we wake him, he'll eat us alive!"

"Where is he?" Ian's voice had gone smaller and smaller.

"Don't you see him? He's lying right there, next to the couch."

Ian stretched himself to have a better look. His heart kept hammering in his chest. And then he saw what Lip meant and all the excitement was gone in a second.

"That's just Frank," he said, disappointed.

But Lip shook his head. "It's Cerberus. He's sleeping right now, so we've got to be really quiet. Here -" he had put a quarter into Ian's hand,"You´ll need it to cross the river that leads to the underworld. Don't lose it or you'll be doomed. And don't touch the water, it's deadly."

And so they made their way through the underworld, hopping from one pillow to the other, never allowed to touch the ground, trying their best not to wake the sleeping hound. Ian's hands were sweaty and his knees were shaking from excitement. One step at a time, helping each other with the biggest distances. Finally, they'd managed to drop pillows in front of Fra- Cerberus and jumped over him without waking him up.

"We did it," Lip whispered.

Ian's heart was beating as fast as if he'd run a mile. "Can we get the treasure now?"

So Lip opened the cupboard and there it was, a bottle of golden liquid. "It's pure gold", Lip whispered, taking the bottle out of the cupboard. "You still have your coin?" Ian nodded.

"Then let's get out of here."

Ten minutes later they were back in their room again, holding the treasure in their hands.

"That was an awesome adventure, wasn't it?" Ian said.

Lip didn't answered. He held the bottle and his eyes glimmered. Then, he opened it.

"What are you doing?"

"Tasting it."

Ian did not want to do that. It was what made Frank turn loud and aggressive and forget about their little league training, but Lip had already put the bottle to his lips and taken a sip. Then he coughed.

"How is it?" asked Ian.

Lip didn't answer and instead shoved the bottle into Ian's hands. So Ian took a sip, too.

It burned like hell and he almost spat it out again.

"That's disgusting. Why does he like it so much?"

Ian was overcome by a coughing fit, then, and he barely realized that Lip had taken another shot already.

_~break~_

The memory stuck and in the next couple of years Cerberus became a metaphor for any huge obstacle to overcome. When Lip lashed out and wasn't allowed to participate in his physics club in school anymore, it was Cerberus. When Ian broke his arm and couldn't join ROTC, Cerberus again. When Monica sold their school books for drug money, once more, Cerberus.

But like most things you held dear in your childhood, it slowly started fading into the background until one day it was completely forgotten. Stored neatly somewhere in the back of their heads, right next to eating vegetables and a favorite movie. It got dusty and barely recognizable.

_~break~_

Years later, Ian lies awake in the psych ward. They say he might be bipolar, but he knows he's not, because he's not like Monica. From all the things in the world he might be, he's definitely not her.

His mind's racing, and he feels restless. Shadows are lurking on the wall, giant beasts that could eat him at every time. That's when he sees it. One of the beasts looks like a hound with three heads. _Cerberus._ It takes him a while to sort his thoughts and remember how the hell he knows that name, but then he knows: _Cerberus. _A giant obstacle to overcome, beastly, scary, aggressive. But not insurmuntable. Ian smiles, and he instantly grows calmer.

_~break~_

About a year later he's standing at a bridge throwing Frank into the river with his family and friends. Some part of his mind tells him that he should feel remorse over that kind of action, but he doesn't. Frank deserves it. Later they celebrate – Gallagher style, try to forget an other awful moment of their life – and that's when it hits him that Lip's not there.

It is Debbie who sits down on the stairs with him. She hands him over Franny and takes a sip from her soda. "He'll get help," is all she says, and there is no need for further explanation.

When he goes to bed, however, he reaches for his phone and opens the chat with Lip. He doesn't even know if phones are allowed in rehab, but he knows it will help him sleep to think he has at least tried to let Lip know he's there. He thinks for a moment how he should sum up all his feelings, types a mile long message and deletes it all. Tries again and doesn't even finish the first sentence. He lays down and looks at the ceiling for a moment until he´s finally gets it. He smiles, looks back at the phone and types one single word.

_Cerberus._

**_~shameless~_**

_**I would be really thankful if you left a review to tell me what you think. Be honest!  
You can also vote which story I'll update next:  
**Truth (Liam & Fiona) **or  
**Bulletproof (Debbie & Carl)_


	5. Bulletproof (Debbie & Carl)

**Disclaimer:** _I own nothing. _

**Timeline: **_ This shot is set sometime after the season 9 finale. _

**_Special thanks go to _**_lemondrizzlecake _**_for beta reading._**

**Bulletproof**

_Debbie & Carl_

It's pitch black outside when Debbie enters the kitchen after her late night shift. She drops her backpack on the ground and heads to the fridge. She takes out a soda, opens the bottle and drinks it all at once. The house is frighteningly quiet, something she never really liked.  
She's used to shouting or laughing, to the sound of someone running up the stairs or slamming a door. Even at night, something would always be loud. Cars on the street or someone banging their current boyfriend or girlfriend. But tonight, there's not a single noise.

She walks into the living room while stretching her neck, and then stops in her tracks.  
The picture she´s presented with, in the half- lit room, is not only ugly, it's scaring the shit out of her.  
Bloody towels lay on the floor, the pillows are spread all over the place and on the couch lays a dark figure, breathing heavily.

With a shaking hand, Debbie turns on the light and takes a deep breath.  
The figure on the couch turns out to be Carl, her little brother, and he's pressing a towel to his arm. The sudden brightness in the room startles him and he looks up.  
For the first time in an eternity, Debbie sees her little brother looking scared.

"What the hell happened?"

He doesn't answer directly. For a shocking second, she thinks that maybe, he's so gravely injured, that he can't talk, but then Carl takes a deep breath and tries to explain.

"It's just a graze."

"What?!"

She's down on her knees right in front of him in a mere second, taking the towel from his hand to evaluate the damage.  
"You telling me someone shot at you?!"

He doesn't answer, but his face says it all.

"Fuck, Carl, what the hell?"

The wound is bleeding too much for her to see the damage done by the bullet, so she swipes the blood away, her hands shaking. It takes a while, but eventually she sees that he's right, the bullet missed its spot and just grazed the flesh. It's bleeding a lot, though.

"Hold it steady", she tells her brother and stumbles into the kitchen to get the first aid kit.

Some part of her brain tells her that she should get help, see if maybe Lip's upstairs or run over to Vee's place, but she shakes it off. _It's just a graze_, she thinks.

She walks back into the living room, sits down next to Carl on the couch. He removes the towel again, and she begins to clean the wound to prepare it for a pressure bandage.

While she's working, they're just sitting there and her heart's beating so loud in her chest that she thinks he must hear it, too. Carl, however, seems frighteningly calm. _Maybe it's the shock_, she thinks.

Finally, she has his arm wrapped up nicely. She examines it once more, then looks up into Carl's face again. He doesn't wanna meet her gaze, she notices, and some part of her wants to force him to, but she doesn't. She takes a deep breath and asks as calmly as she can,

"You gonna tell me what happened?"

Carl chews on his lower lip. His voice is unusually soft, barely audible.

"I thought I could outsmart someone. Clearly, I couldn't. He was – he worked with G-Dog once,

it's complicated and messy. He was mad at me for something I did back when -", he stops right there, not finishing his sentence, seems to think for a moment, how to explain the mess and then he simply says, "He's been in prison for a while and obviously wanted some revenge."

Debbie's heart is pounding. "But I though G-Dog would no longer bother you. It´s been a while. I thought everything was cleared up?"

"It is! It's just this one guy. Don't worry. I did an anonymous call to the police already,

told them he's got a gun. Violation of probation."  
"You sure you gonna be safe?"

This time he finally looks her in her eyes. "Yes, Debbie. It's in the past. Nothing to worry about."

But Debbie does worry, because Carl, sitting there, injured, lonely, broken, flips her world upside down.

For some reason Debbie can't really explain, she always thought Carl would be bulletproof.

Never once in her life did she really think he would ever be hurt like this.

She remembers vaguely the time when Carl was back from juvie and he was selling guns at school. At night, sometimes she would dream about the cops chasing him again, but when they caught him, he just stood there. They would shoot him, thousands of bullets hitting him hard in the chest, but Carl would just stand there, strongly, with a smile on his face. He would never fall.

"You promise me not to tell any of the others?" Carl's words bring her back to reality.

"What?"  
"Promise me you won't tell anyone. They don't have to worry."

"What about me? I´m worrying."

Carl smirks. "You don't have to. I´m alright. I´ll always be alright."

Debbie can't help but smile. "I promise to keep my mouth shut, if you promise me to never get shot again. Wear a goddamn bulletproof vest, if you have to."

"You´re really worried about me, aren't you?" Carl chuckles.

"Shut up, Carl."

His grin only grows brighter, but then, it suddenly disappears, as does the fear in his eyes.

"I promise."

_  
_**I would be happy if you would leave a review and tell me what you think. **_

_**Next up will be **__Truth __**with **__Liam __**& **__Fiona._


	6. Truth (Liam & Fiona)

_Disclaimer:_ _I still don't own anything. All rights belong to Showtime. _

_Author's note: This is far from my best work, but hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway._

_**Many thanks to **Guest "Carri" **for leaving this wonderful review. It made my day. **_

_**Special thanks go to **lemondrizzlecake **for beta reading this story. **_

**Truth**

_Liam & Fiona_

He likes doing homework. That's the truth. He shouldn't probably tell anyone in school, but Liam finds doing his homework challenging and refreshing. It's not easy to focus, in the Gallagher house, and even now that he's at the new school and he feels like he will never learn a thing, he still likes doing homework. Most of the time, he does it in his room, even though someone always interrupts.

Truth is, he finds it refreshingly challenging.

That is, however, until they start to talk about family trees in class. The teacher wants them to build one with a few sentences in writing to sum up each family member. He starts with the easier ones, like _We call our dad Frank, he likes beer and booze but hates to pay for them. He teaches me how the world works. _Steadily, Liam then works through each family member. At one point or another, he has to think for a while, because not everyone is as easy to sum up as Frank, but in the end he's pretty sure he did them all justice.

Well, except for the empty spot, that is.

At the spot where the matriarch of a family should be, he simply wrote down _Monica._

He tried to sum her up in a few sentences, but the only sentence he could truly write was: _I never knew her and now she's dead. _He doesn't like it, though. So he gets up and goes looking for someone who truly knows what he could write about Monica.

He goes to Lip first, because Lip is always the go-to guy when it comes to homework. Lip'´s looking at him for so long, that Liam thinks he might be frozen. Then his oldest brother takes a look at what Liam wrote and shrugged. "Sums her up right, doesn't it?"

Liam isn't pleased, so he goes to Debbie instead. She does not even take a look at the paper, continues to fold her clothes and says: "What's there to say? She was crazy and did not care about any of us. You should not care about her, either. I learned that a long time ago, and you should, too."

That's not helping, either.

Carl´s nowhere to be found and he does not want to call Ian, because the operator at the prison always treats him like a baby. So what he does is putting down the paper on the kitchen table and leaving it for now.

It's later that night and he knows he should be sleeping, but instead he sneaks out of his bed down into the kitchen. When he enters, he stops in his tracks. Fiona's sitting at the table, head in her hands, a bottle next to her. For a second, Liam considers going back into bed, because that's what she will tell him to do anyway, but then he decides otherwise. He walks around the table and places himself in front of his paper.

Fiona only notices him when he's already seated.

"You should be asleep," is all she says, lifting an eyebrow.

"My homework isn't done yet."

Now, Fiona's frowning. "When is it due?"

"Tomorrow."

"That's not like you." _I know, _Liam wants to say, _but sitting all alone in the kitchen drinking beer in the middle of the night isn't like you either._

But he doesn't, and thinking about it, he's actually not sure about it. He's usually asleep at this time, so how shall he know? He looks back at his paper. Does he really know his eldest sister? Did he sum her up correctly?

"What's the matter?"

Liam bites his lip and looks down at his hands. "I don´t -," he starts, but the words don't come out.

"What was Monica like?" he finally blurts out.

He looks up saying it, and it's good he did so, because deep in his heart he knows, he needed to see the reaction on her face. It goes from confusion to denial to sadness and ends with a small smile, that Liam had never thought he'd see on anybody's face mentioning Monica.

She takes a sip from her beer then, lowers the bottle very slowly and looks into the distance.

"She had this aura around her," Fiona finally says, "that I can't really explain. It felt like – it felt like the world wasn't big enough for her to live in. All the space she was taking up, sometimes I was sure, something would explode. Something about her was so strange, _foreign, _but also so familiar, which is a weird way of saying it, because she wa's our mother. She should be familiar, but -," Fiona takes another sip, "and then it would all change. All the energy gone, and suddenly everything would fall apart. Then it was as if – it felt like, if I tried to grasp her, she would vanish into thin air."

She holds on for a second and Liam tries to capture her, sitting her, looking tired, but before he can, she continues, "She wasn't a mother, Liam. I don´t know what she was, but a mother, she was not."

She grows silent and for a second, just a second, in the dim kitchen light something wet seems to glister on her cheeks. Liam thinks about giving her a hug, but decides otherwise. Instead, he says,

"Thank you, Fiona."

Then he gets up and goes to bed.

_~break~_

It's five minutes before the bells rings and Liam still hasn't written anything new. He takes out the pen, marks the point _mother_ with a little red star, draws another star at the first line drawn from the one that links Frank and Monica and writes: _The truth is, my sister's always been more of a mother to me, then my mother ever could._

_**Tell me what you think, leave a review and be honest. **_

_**You can also vote which oneshot will be uploaded next. You can choose between  
**__"Heart" (Fiona & Ian)  
"Mirror" (Carl & Lip)  
or_

_"Vesuvius" (Debbie & Liam)__**. Just write in the comments. **_


	7. Vesuvius (Debbie & Liam)

_**Author's note:** This oneshot is a little shorter than the rest and it's also a little bit more light-hearted, I think. _

**_Special thanks go to_** _lemondrizzlecake **for beta-reading and reviewing all these tiny pieces!  
**_

_**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything. _

**Vesuvius  
**_Debbie & Liam_

She's goddamn tired, as she makes her way home from work. It's around four pm and Debbie can't think of anything nicer than a cool shower. So she enters the kitchen and lets her backpack fall to the ground. She turns around, thinking about making herself a sandwich when -

"Oh my god!"

The kitchen is a mess – no, it's an actual battlefield. The kitchen table is covered in undefinable pieces, the chairs are flipped over and there's this red substance everywhere: on the floor, on the walls – she lifts her head up – even on the freaking ceiling!

"This is a slaughterhouse!" Disgusted, she tries to reach the table without stumbling over anything and examines the red substance. No blood. Part of her is utterly relieved, but the other part of her just gets madder and madder by each passing second.

She walks over to the counter, drops the key she still held in her hands on it and takes a deep breath. "Carl!"

The counter looks like a freaking battleground, too, and growing up in this house Debbie is actually not sure if it wasn't an actual battle that messed the kitchen up like this. And she had just cleaned the floor yesterday! Furious, she lifts one of the pieces from the ground, holds it as far away from her as possible and tries to identify the material. That's when she finally hears footsteps on the stairs. Still filled up with rage, she turns around, ready to scream at Carl for whatever he'd done this time, but freezes. On the last step of the staircase stands Liam, covered in red from head to toe, a mop in his hand and a really guilty look on his face.

"I can explain this!"

Debbie lifts her eyebrows till they hit the roof. "You can?"

Liam's biting his lip now, looking at his feet. "It's a school project."

"Ruining our kitchen is a school project?"

He shakes his head no and looks up again. "It's a volcano. We have to build one for science class. But, you know, standard volcanoes are so boring. I wanted it to really explode and-" He does not continue, instead shuffles on his feet.

"And what?"

"I found one of Lip's old high school books in the attic. Chemistry, physics. Read a little bit into it and found out what I needed to build something explosive."

"And you just found all the ingredients at the supermarket?" Debbie snores. She's so done with this.

"Not all of them. But, coincidentally, Mickey Milkovich came by. He was released from prison, wanted to say hi, delivered some greetings from Ian. He's fine by the way - Ian, not Mickey. Mickey, too, I guess-"

"Get to the point!"

"He was able to get me some of the stuff I needed, his brother works somewhere or something – didn't quite catch it, so..." He stops his narration and gestures wildly instead.

"So what?"

"It worked! It was a real explosion, or at least something close, but I probably messed up with the combination."

"You saying, you could have blown up our kitchen?!"

His mouth opens to contradict her, but he decides otherwise.  
"I was about to clean it up," he lifts up the mop. "You just came in at the wrong time."

Now, Debbie can do nothing but stare at him dumbfounded. "Yeah," is all she can say, "Silly me."

And then she can't help it. She bursts out into laughter. She laughs so hard that her stomach hurts and she's got tears in her eyes and Liam stares at her with wide eyes.  
"You gone mad now?"

Debbie shakes her head. "No," she smiles, "Don't worry." She doesn't stop laughing, though.

Liam frowns confused.

_~break~ _

Later that day they're all sitting in the kitchen eating dinner. Debbie and Liam managed to clean up the mess before the rest of the household came home and then prepared dinner together. It's Carl who suddenly looks up, frowns and asks, "Why the hell is our ceiling red?"

Everybody else follows his gaze and truly, there's still a really red spot on the ceiling.

"I built a volcano. It blew up a bit", Liam says, like it's the most natural thing on earth.

"And you hit the ceiling? Respect, buddy," Lip says.

"It's proven, then," Carl whispers, "He really is a Gallagher."

_**I would be honoured if you left a review.  
You can also decide, which of the following chapters will be uploaded next:**_  
_Mirror (Carl & Lip)_  
or  
_Heart (Fiona & Ian)_


	8. Heart (Fiona & Ian)

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own anything. _

**_Special thanks go to _**_lemondrizzlecake **for beta reading. **_

**Heart  
**_Fiona & Ian_

The fluorescent light on the ceiling is flickering, it smells like death, and everyone around her seems busy. Fiona's sitting on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs that make her tush hurt, her feet dangling in the air, and she doesn't take her eyes away from the door the doctors disappeared behind, little Ian in their arms. Phillip is sleeping next to her, his head pressed to her side, and she clings on to him as if he might disappear, too. He's really quiet but her ears still ring like a bell from the constant crying of the baby, her arms still burn up from the heat he was producing.

There's a thumping in her chest as if she ran a mile – she did, indeed, walk more than that – and it's so painful she wants to scream, but she doesn't want to wake up Phillip, nor draw attention to herself.

Her arms hurt from the weight of two little children and she's pretty sure she's got a blister or two and she's so tired. She wants to sleep, but she's afraid that if she does she will miss it when they bring Ian back through these doors, and she might never see him again. So she pinches her leg with her left hand while absent-mindedly stroking Phillip's hair with her right. It's no use, though. Minutes later, she's fast asleep.

When she wakes up, it takes a while for her to remember where she is and what happened, but when she does, she's up in a second. Her heart is pounding again and she realizes Phillip is missing. Tears immediately prickle in her eyes, but she wipes them away, jumps off the chair, and looks at her surroundings. She's about to panic completely, when she hears his laughter. She follows the sound and finds her little brother behind the counter, surrounded by nurses, all smiling down at him with their eyes gleaming. He's always been a charmer.

She's glad he's not lost, but her heart stings again. All these strangers feel like intruders in their lives, and they've already taken Ian away from her, she won't let them have Phillip, too.

But then he sees her. "Fi, Fi!" he giggles and stretches out his tiny hand into her direction. He holds a cracker in it.

One of the nurses follows his gaze and sees Fiona's awake. She smiles and walks over to her.  
"Are you hungry? You can have a sandwich. Or crackers. Your brother seems to like them."

She surely looks nice and Fiona's got to admit that her tummy's growling by the thought of food, but there's only one thing that's important right now, so she shakes her head no and simply asks, "Where´s Ian?"

_~break~_

When she's finally allowed to see him, Monica is back by her side, together with a strange woman that introduced herself as Jane. Jane's got this clipboard and Monica tells her, quietly, so that Jane can't hear, that she needs to be nice and not say anything bad about Frank or her, because then Fiona might never see Ian or Phillip again. The sole thought makes Fiona's heart break into a thousand pieces, and so she says nothing. She has, however, already said earlier that they had simply gotten lost in the crowd, that she had heard her parents call for her, but couldn't find them. The lie had slipped from her lips so easily, that she's afraid, she might never be able to tell a truth again.

Ian's lying in this huge cot and he's not crying anymore. His face isn't red and feverish anymore, and he's sleeping peacefully. She ignores Monica who started talking and stroking the baby's head, and she takes Ian's hand in her own. _It's__ so tiny_, she realizes.

He's breathing steadily and looks peaceful and for the first time in more than two days, Fiona's heart beats strong and calm. She smiles when she realizes his fingers wrap around her pinky.

_~break~_

The worst thing that happens in the aftermath is not that they get put into foster homes, but that Ian and Phillip are staying with a different family than she is. It's the first time she's away from them for longer than a school day and she doesn't like it one bit.

It feels like an eternity but it's only a couple of days until she's back home again.

Phillip wants her attention, badly. "Fi, Fi," he says and giggles, but her heart knows that he'll be okay waiting. Instead, she grabs little Ian and holds him tightly to her chest. For the first time in over a week, her heart doesn't feel like it's going to explode.

_~break~_

Years later, she thinks back to that time as she sits in a hospital waiting room once again, because it all feels so familiar. Again, it's Ian she's waiting for, and she has Lip by her side. She remembers faintly that back then she still called him Phillip, because it was before Ian started talking and created the nickname in his childish banter.

Now they're both grown up, but it doesn't make her worry any less. Her heart still pounds against her chest and all she wants is for her little brother to be alright - though she knows he's not. She knows the signs, she has seen them all her life in Monica. Seeing her in Ian is what makes that fear come back, the feeling of helplessness and despair. She grabs onto her jacket like it's a lifesaver and breathes slowly while her heart beats roughly against her chest.

When they're finally called in to hear the news they already knew, it feels like someone else is experiencing it all. Her heart aches, because she knows this is something she can't protect her little brother from.

~_break~_

They say, no one wants to admit it, but all parents have favorites. She loves all her siblings, she really does, loves them all equally, but she has to admit, that she's always had a special place in her heart for Ian.

She's sitting in a hospital waiting room again, some years later. For the first time in forever, though, she doesn't have to worry about any of her siblings. It's just a check-up for herself and yet, Fiona's heart pounds roughly.

She hasn't been back to Chicago in quite a while, and all she got was an occasional phone call every now and then. She sent them all postcards, from everywhere she's been, lots and lots of postcards. She misses seeing their faces, even though they sent her pictures. She misses the scent of Liam's hair, or the way Debbie would roll her eyes at her whenever she told her what to do. She misses calling out Carl for doing something dangerous and even  
Lip's know-it-all remarks. But most of all, she misses Ian's red hair poking out under some cover or coming up the stairs, making her feel at home.

**_I honestly find the ending a little cheesy. What do you think?  
Next up will be _**_"Mirror" **with Carl and Lip.  
**_


	9. Mirror (Carl & Lip)

_**Disclaimer: **I own nothing.  
_

**_Special thanks go to_**_ lemondrizzlecake **for beta reading. **_

**Mirror**

_Carl & Lip_

The sun rises brightly and turns the cold October sky into a sea of redness, as Carl makes his way home from his night shift at the restaurant. It's freezing and he curses himself for not putting on a warmer jacket. Then again, maybe it's not that important at all. Lately, nothing seems really important to him.

Right now, the only thing he cares for is to get a nice warm shower to wash away the smell of seafood and then fall into bed to get a good cap of sleep. Reaching the Gallagher residence, he fumbles out his key, but then stops in his tracks.

What holds him back is Lip sitting on the steps of the front porch. He's not wearing a jacket, he's holding a cigarette, and he doesn't seem to notice Carl. It's not an unusual sight, but something about his brother's face shakes Carl up, even though he hates admitting it. His brother looks broken. It's as easy as that, and it must mean a lot if even he, who never even gave a shit about learning how to read social cues, sees it.

Problem is, that's where his limited social skills end. He's always been the one that causes the mess, not the one who cleans it up.

But his heart aches, so he slowly makes his way up the stairs and sits down next to Lip.

Lip doesn't look up. Instead, he continues smoking his cigarette, holds it unsteadily in his left hand and stares into nothing.

Carl doesn't wanna ask if he's okay, because that's not him, asking such a question, and also he feels like it would be a stupid one. Of course he isn't. "Aren't you freezing?" he asks instead. "It's freaking cold."

Lip doesn't answer. He takes another puff from his cigarette and then fumbles with his hands, stares down at them and somehow seems to not see them at all.

It's only then, that Carl sees it for the first time, and he wonders how the detail could've slipped from his attention before. Lip's right hand is bruised and the skin cracked open right around the knuckles. It looks nasty and unclean and it's pretty clear what happened.

"The guy deserved it?" Carl asks, taking the cigarette out of Lips hands and pointing at the broken skin.

Lip inhales sharply. "Yeah," he says, but it's barely a whisper.

"Good. I hope he looks like it, too." He takes a puff and gives the cigarette back to Lip, who silently accepts it. "You gonna tell me why?"

Lip shakes his head.

They sit in silence for a while, even after the cigarette is finished.

The sun has risen completely when Carl finally has enough of it and hits Lip lightly on the shoulder.  
"Come on, I'm freezing." He gets up and waits for Lip to rise too, but he doesn't.

So Carl pulls him softly by his sleeve and guides him inside. He doesn't wanna admit that he's getting worried, so he just keeps going on instead. "Follow me," he says. "Gonna clean that mess up."

For a second he's not sure if Lip is really going to listen, but then they both stumble upstairs.

When they reach the bathroom, Carl freezes.

The door stands open and inside it's a mess. There's glass all over the floor, small packages of shampoo and other stuff are lying around and the mirror is – well, it's broken.

He takes a look back at Lip, who – as Carl now realizes – has not looked him in the eyes yet, back at the mirror and bites his tongue. His own question rings in his ears like a bell: _The guy __deserved__ it?_

He doesn't say a thing, though, shoves away the glass with his feet and motions for Lip to sit. He obeys, plants himself on the floor, his back leaning against the bathtub, while Carl looks around the bathroom to find something useful to wrap up Lip's hand with. He gathers some supplies and wordlessly kneels down in front of Lip. They don't exchange a word while Carl cleans the cuts, examines the hand, deems it not broken and wraps it up as nicely as he can. When he's finished, he sits down next to Lip, leans against the tub, and sighs.

"You gonna tell me what happened?"

Lip's silent for a while and Carl's about to tell him that it's okay, that he doesn't have to tell him if he doesn't want to, but then Lip's small voice breaks the silence.  
It sounds so wrong, because Lip's never been short on words or quiet at all.

"Tami lost the baby."

Carl's heart skips a beat. "Fuck," he says and takes a look at his brother. Lip's eyes are puffy red and shiny and it occurs to Carl that this is the first time he sees his older brother cry. He didn't cry when Monica died, nor when they found out Ian's bipolar. And suddenly Carl wonders whether he might have thought that Lip would never cry at all, that his brother was too strong for crying.

"I'm sorry," Carl says, because he thinks that's what you're supposed to say in such a situation, even though he feels like it does not help at all. "Is Tami – is she alright?"

Lip inhales deeply. "Yes, yes, Tami's gonna be okay. They say, it sometimes just happens. The bleeding – she has to stay at the hospital overnight, but she'll be alright. Physically."

They fall back into silence. Carl's head is pounding for some reason and he feels like he should say more, but there's nothing he could say. Instead, he looks around the room, all the broken glass and the towels and supplies, until his eyes fall on a tiny glass bottle in front of him. It holds some golden liquid and even though Carl can't read the label, he knows what it is. His heart beats faster and he opens his mouth to ask the question, but the words won't come out. He feels like crying now, too, but he doesn't let himself.

Lip must have followed his gaze, because he sniffs quietly and then answers the unspoken question. "Don't worry. It's still closed."

The relief that rushes through Carl's veins is indescribable. He gets up, takes the bottle in his hands and opens it. Then he pours the liquid down the drain, watches as it slowly runs down the sink, and only when the bottle's empty and he puts it back down he realizes that his hands are shaking.

"Thanks."

This time Lip's voice is more steady. Carl looks back at him. His eyes are still red, but the tears are gone. _No problem,_ he wants to say, but the words somehow get stuck in his throat. Instead, he takes a deep breath, then another, until he finally regains his voice.

"Go downstairs, drink some water, wash your face. Go to the hospital and be there for Tami," he says. "I'll clean up the mess."

_  
_**Reviews make me happy. **_

_**You can also decide, which Story I'll upload next:  
****Agyrophobia** with Liam & Ian  
_

_**Wolf** with Fiona & Carl _

_**Monster** with Debbie & Lip _


	10. Agyrophobia (Liam & Ian)

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. _

**_Special thanks got to_**_ lemondrizzlecake **for beta reading. **_

* * *

**Agyrophobia**

_Liam & Ian_

It's midsummer and the sun is burning down from the sky so intensely that Liam thinks he might melt right here and turn into a little puddle of Liam on the sidewalk. He's waiting for Ian though, outside of the store, because Ian forgot to buy washing powder, though Debbie told him three times that they were out of it. He's pretty sure he can already feel his ears start to melt when he hears the music. The ice cream truck.  
He turns around on his heels and watches in awe as the truck turns into the street, children following already and finally coming to a halt right on the opposite side of the street. The kids are laughing and yelling, and there's a picture of a gigantic ice cream on the back of the truck that makes Liam's mouth water. Nothing would be greater than a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream right now – except maybe chocolate, or strawberry.

But he's got no money and so he has to wait for Ian to turn up. Gives him time to practice his puppy dog face, figuring out how to melt Ian's heart as fast as the sun is melting him. Fiona can never resist when his eyes turn big and Lip is the kind of guy who likes it when Liam uses good argumentation. Carl would want ice cream himself and Debbie is so resistant that he wouldn't stand a chance anyway, but Liam has to admit, he has no idea how Ian would react if he asked him.

He doesn't have any more time to think about it, though, because that's when Ian appears right next to him, washing powder in his arms, ranting already.

"How can they charge twelve dollars for this? This is insane, I-"  
"Ian!" laying all the excitement he can into his voice, Liam tries to go with a combination of the Fiona and the Lip version. He looks up into his brother's face and bites his lip. Level of cuteness increased. "Don't you think our bodies need a temperature drop? I know the perfect tool for it with maximal efficiency." Argumentation – undefeatable. "Ice cream. Funny enough, there happens to be an ice cream truck standing right on the other side of the street."

Ian sighs, then nods. "Okay, why not."  
Almost not believing that it actually worked, Liam grabs Ian's hand and starts pulling him towards the truck, when Ian jerks him back.

"Liam! You can't simply cross the street here!"

Liam looks up at him confused. "Why not?"  
"It's too busy. That's dangerous. We're going to use the foot crossing. Has no one ever taught you how to properly cross a street?"  
"Everyone except for you did. Not one of them cared if there was a proper crossing – why is your hand so sweaty?"  
"It's not – it's hot, that's why!"

Liam looks Ian in the eyes, watches his features closely and suddenly he gets it.

"You're afraid."  
"What?"  
"You're afraid of crossing the street right here with no traffic light."  
"That's bullshit."  
"Then why can't I just simply walk there and get my ice cream?"  
"Because, that's not – because I say so."

With these words, Ian drags him further along the street, two hundred feet till the next traffic light and waits with him there. When the light says walk, Ian looks to his left, to his right and then crosses the street, still holding Liam's hand. That's when the ice cream truck starts its engine and drives away.  
"Great. Now it's gone."  
"But we didn't get hit by a car."

Liam shoots him an angered look, as all the trouble of convincing his brother to get ice cream has been for nothing. "So I'm missing out on the maybe most fabulous ice cream ever because you were too afraid to cross the street."  
"I wasn't-" Ian starts, then he shakes his head, "I was thinking about going back to the store to get some, but I guess, you've just made me _not _want to do this."  
"Because then we'd have to cross the street again?"  
"Liam!"

_~break~_

It's later that day and they're sitting in the kitchen. Debbie's standing by the stove while Ian, Carl and little Franny are seated at the table chopping vegetables. It's then that Liam sits down at the counter, brings the laptop with him and opens Google.  
"What are you doing?" asks Debbie, but Liam's too busy to answer.  
"Hah!"  
"What?" says Carl.  
"_Agyrophobia_."  
"What?"  
"_Agyrophobia_, that's what it's called, Ian."  
"Liam, I swear-" Ian starts, but Debbie cuts him off.  
"Is _what_ called?"  
"The fear of crossing a busy street."  
"Who would be afraid of that?"  
"I-"  
"Liam!" Ian cuts him off, looking at him in disbelief. Liam gets the message and shuts up, but it's too late and the damage is done.  
"You're afraid of crossing the street?" Carl asks frowning, looking at Ian. Then he laughs.  
"It's not funny!"  
"Isn't not wanting to cross a busy street without a proper crossing called more like – _common sense?_" Debbie asks, walking around the counter and grabbing the bowl of chopped vegetables.  
"Thanks, Debbie," Ian says, following her back to the kitchen to wash his hands.  
"But then again," she continues, "we are Gallaghers and Gallaghers aren't particularly known for their common sense, which makes it even weirder for you to have Agy- what is it called?."  
"I don't have it!"  
"Don't have what?"  
It's just so happens to be the exact moment when Fiona and Lip enter the kitchen, giving Fiona the opportunity to ask that question.

"Agyrophobia," Liam tells her, folding his arms.  
"What's that?" Fiona wants to know.  
"The fear of crossing a busy street." Everybody now looks at Lip, who is the one that answered.  
"How do you know that?" Ian looks at him open-mouthed.  
"Since I looked it up when I had to walk two-hundred feet from the bus to the crosswalk with you, when you started middle school, because you would not dare to cross anywhere else. People called me a wimp the whole school year – don't ask what they called _you_ behind your back."  
Liam watches with fascination as Ian opens and closes his mouth again and again, speechless.  
"Asshole," Ian then manages.  
"No," Lip says with a smug grin, "it was way worse than that."

There's just silence for a moment, then Ian has had enough.  
"Liam, give me the laptop," he says, stretching out his hand, and the gesture is so aggressive that Liam, for the first time ever, is afraid of him.

"Why?" he asks with a tiny voice.  
"As an EMT in training, I can tell you what sorts of horrible things can happen when people cross the street without using a marked crossing. I will show you the statistics-"  
"I'm sorry."  
"What?" Ian now looks back at Liam, his eyes wide.  
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told them. Please don't bore us with that stuff."  
"Bore?" There's definitely chuckling now all around the kitchen.  
"I promise I will always cross the street the proper way."  
This seems to calm Ian down, as he now lowers himself on a chair. "Fine," he says.

_~break~  
_

It's later that evening, and Liam's sitting in the living room, watching TV, when Debbie's disgusted voice rings over from the kitchen, making Liam turn his head into the same direction.

"Oh my god! That's gross." She's standing in the kitchen leaning over some photos, Ian next to her.  
"See," he tells her, crossing his arms over his chest "that's what happens when you cross the street without a traffic light."

* * *

_**A/N:**_

_**I really hope you enjoyed this.  
**_

_**You can vote, which OS I'll upload next,** Monster (with Debbie & Lip) **or **__Wolf __(with Fiona & Carl)**. Tell me in the comments. **_


	11. Monster (Debbie & Lip)

_**Disclaimer: **_I own nothing.

_**Many thanks for beta reading, **lemondzrizzlecake**.**_

* * *

**Monster**

_Debbie & Lip_

She's five years old when it happens for the first time. She heard the stories, but never thought it would actually be a thing until she's lying in bed one night and clearly hears a sound. It's not quite a sound she can place and she's really sure it comes from under her bed.

The mere second it takes for her to slip from a comfortable slumber into a state of full awareness is enough for her heartbeat to race, a layer of sweat covering her forehead.

She tries to make out her bedroom in the darkness while listening really carefully. She must be mistaken, she thinks, but then she hears it again.

She doesn't have to take a look to know what it is. The sound alone is enough to paint a vivid picture in her head – of something hairy, with long claws and gloomy eyes. She shrieks and sits up, ready to hop out of her bed, until she realizes that this might be what the monster's been waiting for, that it will grab her feet with its puckered hands as soon as they touch the floor.

So she climbs to the foot of the bed instead, drops a pillow on the floor to distract the beast, jumps out of bed and is out of the room within seconds.

She sneaks into Fiona's bedroom, but finds the bed empty.  
Instead, there's a sound coming from the TV downstairs, so Debbie grabs one of Fiona's pillows, holds it tight to her chest and makes her way to the living room.  
She doesn't find Fiona there, but Lip, watching a really awful-looking movie. It makes her fear even worse.

Lip's her brother and a great guy, but he's not Fiona, and therefore Debbie doesn't know how to approach him with this. So she just stands there, holding the pillow, until he finally realizes someone's staring at him and he turns his head around to face her.

He moves quickly as he turns off the TV, nearly dropping the remote in the process, and something in the back of her head tells Debbie that he shouldn't be watching TV at this hour – but that's not her problem. Her problem is upstairs.  
"What are you doing up?" His voice is not angry, just confused.

She fiddles with the pillow and doesn't look him in the eyes.

"There's a monster under my bed."

He stares at her dumbfounded, but then he suddenly smiles.

"There are no such things as monsters," he explains.

"But I heard it, it's there. Things you can hear are the only ones that definitely exist," she tells him, and he lifts his eyebrows at that. "No, it goes: Things that you can _see_ are the only-"

"Where's Fiona?" she cuts him off. She's really not in the mood for one of his know-it-all spiels, right now.

Lip gestures towards their living room. "Not here, as you can see. Or can't see. Which leads us to the question, does Fiona even really exists-"

"Lip!" Debbie's eyes go wide and she hopes he's just joking.  
"She's looking for Frank," he finally explains. "Don't know when she'll be back."

"And the monster?"

She hears him sigh, but then he gets up and gestures for her to follow him.  
He leads her into the kitchen, grabs one of the many boxes over the washing machine and takes out a flashlight. Then they go upstairs.

As they enter her bedroom, Debbie stops in her tracks and watches Lip from the doorway as he kneels down in front of her bed and shines the light under it. "See," he says. "Nothing there."

So she slowly – really slowly – sneaks next to him, kneels down too, and takes a look._ Nothing_.

"You must have scared it away."

He sighs again, louder this time. "No, Debs, it's just that monsters don't exist. They're not real. Call me, when something is actually hiding under your bed."

And with these words he leaves her for his own bed. It doesn't matter that he's grumpy, though, because Debbie feels safe now.

A few days later he gets her _The monster at the end of this book _from the library and that's how Debbie learns to read.

_~break~_

She's seven when her class goes to the museum and Debbie sees a dinosaur for the first time. It's gigantic and scary – even though her teacher says it's just the bones – and Debbie can't stop thinking about it.

At night, however, she lies awake again, because she can clearly hear a Velociraptor under her bed. It makes this awful sound that can only come from a carnivorous dinosaur, and her heart races in her chest. She gulps, breathes in deeply for a few times to gather all her bravery, jumps out of the bed and runs downstairs.

Fiona, Lip and Ian are all sitting on the couch, Fiona's watching TV and the other two are doing their homework. They all look up as soon as Debbie enters the room.

"What's wrong?" Fiona asks.

"There's a dinosaur under my bed. Dinosaurs are real."

Fiona raises an eyebrow and looks at Ian, who just looks confused. Lip, however, sighs.  
"Dinosaurs are extinct, you know that, right?"

"Well, obviously one survived and now he's hiding under my bed."

"Debbie-" Fiona starts, but Lip cuts her off.

"Where's the flashlight?" he asks and Debbie smiles.

The next day, Debbie goes to the library herself and borrows a book about dinosaurs.

_~break~_

She reads a lot about dinosaurs and learns that crocodiles are their descendants. She also learns that crocodiles can jump high and wait a long time until they do so.  
So one night, she lies awake again and knows – she just knows – that there's a crocodile under her bed, because crocodiles are real and they're not extinct. So she takes a deep breath and then throws her pillow over the floor as bait. Nothing happens. _It must be sleeping, _she thinks, and then jumps out of the bed and runs down the floor into the boys' room.

Lip's asleep in his bed, so she climbs up there and shakes him awake.

"There's a crocodile under my bed," she says.

"A crocodile?" He looks at her confused, opens his mouth to tell her off, explain why it's impossible for a crocodile to really be under her bed, but then he decides otherwise. Instead, he wordlessly gets out of bed, gets the flashlight, and shows her that it's not there.

_~break~_

She's twelve years old and way too old to believe in monsters.  
She also knows that no dinosaur or crocodile will ever hide under her bed. But now she also knows that sometimes people are more like monsters than any monster ever could be. She knows that there are men who hurt women and women who break her brother's heart.

She doesn't say any of those things out loud, though, because she learned long ago to take the world as it is.

That's until Fiona gets angry at Lip because he won't leave his bed and won't go to school, and Debbie knows Fiona is not really mad, but worried. She knows it because _she_'s worried, too. It's like some monster grabbed her brother and now he's not the same.

So at night she gets out of bed, goes over to Lip's and shakes him awake.

"There's a monster under my bed," she says, and waits.

Lip crawls out from under his sheet and groggily follows her into her room. And she smiles.

* * *

_**Thanks for reading. Maybe leave a review? **_

_**Next up will be **"Wolf" **with Fiona and Carl. **_


	12. Wolf (Fiona & Carl)

**Disclaimer:** **I own nothing. **

**A/N: Since I am not from the US and have never been there I had to google a bit about Lincoln Park Zoo and if they have wolves there. Read they have red wolves, so I went with it. Also: this shot takes place about a year before the pilot, but because the shows timeline is confusing, the ages in the shot are, too and so are distances and time it takes to cross them.**

**Special thanks go to **_lemondrizzlecake _**for beta reading. **

* * *

**Wolf**

_Fiona & Carl_

The snow falls thick and white as Fiona makes her way home from grocery shopping. It's freezing cold and her fingers hurt, as she takes off her gloves and fishes her keys out of her bag. She has some trouble opening the door one-handedly, the bags piled on her other arm,, but she manages eventually.  
"Would someone please come and help me?" she screams, entering the living room, praying that at least one of her siblings is home.  
She can't see anything through the high pile of grocery bags, but she clearly hears footsteps coming from all over the place, and soon she is completely relieved of her load as Lip and Debbie both grab a bag and bring them into the kitchen.

Sighing tiredly, Fiona takes off her jacket and shoes and leans down to place a kiss on Liam's forehead. The baby's lying on the floor, chewing on some washcloths. He's got some baby teeth lately, reminding Fiona of how fast the time flies. He's seven months now, meaning Monica has been gone for almost five, and Fiona is finally starting to think – partially relieved, partially cursing that woman – that she might not come back this time.  
She walks into the kitchen and finds Debbie and Lip, for some reason both being good kids and doing their homework.

"Hey there. You're keeping an eye on the little one, right?"  
"He's a happy little racoon with a washcloth, Fiona. He can't even crawl anywhere yet."  
She shoots Lip a glance and he immediately grabs his stuff to continue his homework in the living room.

"Where are Ian and Carl?" asks Fiona, rummaging through the bags and putting the groceries into the fridge.

"Ian said he wants to find some real work, something about a shop and cash."  
"And Carl?"

Debbie doesn't look at her, but rather starts playing with her hair. "Not here."  
Fiona gives her a look, then walks into the living room, where Lip's changing Liam's diaper.  
"You noticed our eight years old brother isn't here?"  
"Yes. He wanted to go to the zoo."  
"Carl – at the zoo?" She doesn't quite get it, cause the only time Carl's ever interested in animals is when he can torture them. "You realize we can't afford to pay for a burned alpaca? And how did he get there? I swear, if something-"

"I gave him money for the bus and made him promise three times to not kill anything. He seemed kinda down and didn't want to talk about it. I had no time for it either 'cause I had to write an essay about freakin' King Lear which actually paid for the damn bus and a third of the electric bill – by the way the dryer is broken, but Kev promised to-"

"Lincoln Park?"  
He looks up at her, eyes glowing with teenage rage and – as Fiona realizes with a pinch of satisfaction – fear of her.  
"Yes, Lincoln Park."  
She sights and puts her jacket back on. She was thinking about taking a bath tonight, but she guesses that will have to wait for another day. "The ground meat needs to be fried tonight or it's going to spoil," she tells him while putting her jacket and shoes back on. She's gone within a minute.

_~break~_

It's almost an hour later, and already starting to turn dark, when Fiona finally arrives at Lincoln Park.  
It takes her another twenty minutes to find Carl, her heart beating roughly against her chest as she looks for him. When she finally spots him by the wolves compound, the green jacket that's too big for him hiding most of his form,, she's both relieved and worried. There's barely another soul there, and the few people that she saw were all traveling in groups. Carl, however, looks so tiny and lost and alone, and Fiona for the first time in quite a while remembers that he's only eight. She vaguely remembers that she was here, too, when she was eight, but surprisingly with Frank and Monica at her side.

She approaches him quietly, watching his profile in the semi-darkness and trying to figure out if there is anything off about him. _He seemed kinda down and didn't want to talk about it, _Lip said, and as the words ring in her ears it suddenly hits her that Carl never talks about any of his worries. He's surely not the only Gallagher with that attitude – far from it – but Fiona also knows that he's the only one she allows to get away with it. Shrugs it off as him not being as social as the other ones.

She walks slowly towards him until she's standing by his side, and then she turns around to face the compound. There's a single red wolf in it, hiding under a rock, eating his dinner.  
"They only have one?" she asks, certain that Carl already noticed her.  
"Yeah," he shrugs. "Used to be more than that, but I guess he's all alone now."  
"What happened to the rest?"  
He looks at her now, frowning, and then he shrugs. "I asked the zookeeper. Said the rest moved on to other zoos, or died."  
"He must feel lonely," she says. "Left behind, while everybody does their thing off somewhere else."  
Carl doesn't reply; instead, he folds his arms over the handrail around the compound and lays his head on it. There's so much else that Fiona wants to say, her heart suddenly heavy. She remembers that after Monica left, Debbie slept in Fiona's bed for a month. And when Frank went missing for two weeks, Ian went on an early morning run every day to "train for ROTC" – even though it would not restart 'til March and he never did it before or after. The trash cans behind their house looked suspiciously as if someone had demolished them with a baseball bat once Frank finally came home again, drunker than ever, and Fiona didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to know that this someone was Lip.

Carl had done no such thing. The consistency of him torturing tiny animals and other students was appalling. No ups, no downs, for months and years.  
"Wolves should live in packs," she continues to fill the silence. "That's what they're made for. That's how they survive. Every single one of them."  
Carl doesn't answer, but after a little while she feels his tiny body press closer to hers. And Fiona finally smiles.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Maybe leave a review?**

**You can choose which oneshot I will post next: **

**Running** (Carl & Ian),

**Safety **(Lip & Liam) or

**Beholding **(Debbie & Fiona).


	13. Safety (Lip & Liam)

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

**Many thanks go to** _lemondrizzlecake_ **for beta reading all this.**

* * *

**Safety**

_Lip & Liam_

Lip likes to preen himself with the fact that he's not scared easily.  
Even as a child, it was as if things that would freeze other people on spot barely touched him. Nightmares, psychotic parents, people stabbing each other on the streets - it didn't matter. Looking the horror in its face was nothing new.

But that was before he saw his little three years old brother lying on the kitchen floor, coke on his face, unresponsive.

Now, hours later, he's still waiting for some news on Liam.  
The incapability to breathe and the thumping of his heart against his ribcage are the only things reaching his mind. He tries to count the beats, _one, two, three, four, five _but when he gets to the twenties his head loses focus and he mixes it up.

So he just sits in the hospital chair, eyes glued on the door behind which they brought Liam and focuses on that.  
He knows he should comfort Debbie and Carl; he hears Kevin say something and knows he should answer, but he can't, because then he'd have to take his eyes off the door. So he doesn't, he just stares and keeps counting. _One, two, three, four, five._

When they let him see Liam, wired from head to toe, too freaking tiny for that bed, he forgets how to breathe. He hears the doctor talk, hears her say something about brain damage and learning disabilities but doesn't listen. Instead he focuses on the raising of Liam's chest. _One, two, three, four, five._

_~break~_

He'd always found numbers utterly comforting. It's a secret he never told anyone, because he knows how they'd react. Counting gives him safety. Counting the heads of the family members when the usual Gallagher chaos breaks out. _One, two, three, four, five. _He doesn't need to count himself (six) and doesn't want to count in Frank (seven) or Monica (eight), so five is the number that sticks, that gives him comfort and calms him down.

It's hardly noticeable, though, like having to click his pen five times before an exam or rubbing his fingers together in a rhythm of five, the right thumb rubbing comforting over the knuckle of his left pointer finger.. Forwards and then counting every time when it goes backwards. One. Forwards again. Two, when it goes backwards. Forwards. Three. Forwards. Four. Forwards. Five.  
He repeats it as long as necessary.

But this time, sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair, waiting for some news about Liam, he just sits there and strokes his fingers without counting. Sits there and can't count his heartbeat or his breath. Until he finally sees his baby brother and learns that he will live.

_~break~_

When you always count your family members heads, it's a common thing that the tiniest one comes in last, simply because it takes some time to see him, and it goes faster if he counts the rest and looks for Liam at once, instead of just looking for Liam and then starting the counting.  
But when Liam comes home from the hospital it takes a while until Lip realizes that he starts with Liam now and doesn't actually need the rest of the numbers to feel safe. (Which is good, 'cause you can't get to five when a certain redhead is running berserk)

Five is not necessarily the only number that helps. He likes counting the gums sticking to the L-Train floor or the holes in the ceiling in his dorm room, where someone might or might not have practiced throwing knives, but more often than not, he still packs everything into packages of five. _One, two, three, four, five _gums. Then going on to the next ones. From his usual spot on, he can count three packages of five and a single gum that sticks to the floor right next to the door. It's so far off from the others, that he sometimes forgets to count it, and one night, when he's dead tired and has Liam sleeping on his lap, he realizes how coincidental it is, that number six is so far away from the rest, that he doesn't have to count it, just like he himself is so far away now.

He teaches Liam how to count – thank god there doesn't seem to be any brain damage – and doesn't think much of it when they stop at five. Liam's voice is soft and calming when he sits next to him and starts counting. _One, two, three, four, five. _It takes all his strength to stay awake and not let himself soothe into sleep by his little brother's counting.

_~break~_

Lately, he's too tired to count for himself anyway. Juggling school, managing the household and worrying about Liam and Fiona gets its toll out of him.  
When he was younger, he would count himself to sleep: sheep, holes, gunshots. Never mattered.  
He doesn't need that anymore, he mostly falls asleep immediately, because he's so god damn tired.

It's the beginning of the end, and for some reason, he stops counting. He doesn't realize it at first, but one day he's sitting at the table with his family, back from college. They're all there, even Ian, and it's him who gives Lip a strange look after Lip shovels potatoes on his plate.  
"Only four? Don't you want a fifth?"  
Lip looks at him confused, but Ian just smiles and Lip realizes that his secret might not be as much of a secret as he thought.  
"One, two, three, four, five!" Liam says sticking his tiny fingers into the air and it breaks the uncomfortable silence and makes everybody laugh.

_~break~_

So Lip stops counting.  
When he needs comfort he takes out the fidget spinner instead or has a good ol' smoke or goes for a run. The latter two are not really working well together, but it's okay.  
What he does, though, when he can't sleep, is taking out his phone and looking at a picture of Liam.

He almost forgets about it and his obsession with the number five, until years later.  
It's after Fiona's gone and he's standing in the kitchen, cooking.  
Debbie's there, too, playing with Franny, and Liam's doing his homework.  
It's then when he hears it. Someone is tapping his foot against the leg of a chair.  
_One, two, three, four – _there's a pause and Lip looks up.  
_One, two, three, four –_ Lip's hands feel itchy, he tries to breathe and get calm, but -  
_One, two, three, four - _  
"For god's sake, Liam!"  
Liam shoots up in no time, looking visibly confused. "What?"  
"It's five! Five!"  
"What are you talking about?"  
"His OCD," Debbie answers.  
"His what?"  
"It's not important. Just -" he tries to breathe and notices a familiar pattern returning as he counts to five. "It's nothing."  
Liam frowns at him, gives Debbie a look, but she just shrugs and leaves with Franny.  
It's just him and Liam now, but the latter doesn't tap his foot against the stool's leg anymore. When Lip looks at him, though, he sees the younger boys finger tapping on the table in an undeniable pattern. He doesn't call him out for it, just watches his little brother for a while. He's good in school and lately he talks more, his smart remarks always making Lip proud.  
He gets it, then. Four must be as comforting for Liam, as five is for him. Maybe Liam doesn't even notice, or he thinks it's a well-hidden secret, even though it isn't anymore.

_~break~_

A day later he sits down next to Liam and lays down a brand new fidget spinner in front of him.  
"What's that?"  
"For your hands. Gives them something to do. It's comforting, believe me," Lip explains.  
Liam frowns at him, but takes the spinner anyway.

* * *

**Author's Note: **** I'm gonna be honest, this is not my best work. What do you think? Constructive criticism is welcome. **

**Which one of these would you want to read next?**

**"Running" **with Carl and Ian

**or**

**"Beholding"** with Debbie and Fiona.

**Also, since we have seen almost all Gallagher duos interact now, would anybody be interessted in another round of these oneshots? **


	14. Running (Carl & Ian)

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. This is just for fun.

**This piece takes place during season 9. **

**Special thanks go to **_lemondrizzleake _**for beta reading.**

_**Everything in italic is a thought. **_

* * *

**Running  
**_Carl & Ian_

It's five o'clock in the morning when Carl groggily makes his way to the bathroom to have a slash.  
He's only halfway finished when someone comes through the door.  
"God damn it, I'm trying to piss!"  
"Nothing there that I haven't seen a hundred times." It's Ian. He's holding a plastic bag in his hand and sits down on the tub, legs shaking.  
"I know that you don't have a lot of free time left, but I would really appreciate if you'd wait till I'm finished next time." Carl pulls the zipper up and faces his brother. He's so nervous that Carl thinks he might jump on the walls a second later, eyes not even locking in with Carl's, forehead sweaty.

"What's going on with you? You high or something?" Carl wonders aloud as he starts washing his hands.  
"I'm not the one using soap right now", Ian jokes, but it falls flat. Carl shoots him a glance, finishes washing his hands and sits down on the toilet.  
"Spit it out," he says, fumbling with the pocket of his shirt to get a joint out.  
"I can ask someone else." Ian shakes his head and is about to stand up, but Carl motions for him to sit down again.  
"I'm your bro, man. You can ask me anything."

He watches, as Ian sits down again and lifts his gaze to the ceiling. He twists his head to the left, then to the right, and Carl really wonders what the hell is going on.  
"I need a gun," he finally says.  
"Huh?"  
"A gun: Smith and Wesson, Glock, whatever."  
"I hate to break it to you, but you can't take a gun to prison, Ian. They search you before you're taken in -"  
"I'm not planning on doing my time."  
It takes a while for the words to sink in.  
"Oh" is all Carl gets out. Ian, however, doesn't wait for a reply. Instead, he takes the plastic bag and empties it on the floor. Scissors, hair dye and an electric razor fall to the floor.  
Stunned, Carl picks up the dye. "Black?"  
"It's the easiest. Can you get me a gun now?"  
Carl shakes his head, not looking Ian in the eyes.  
"Fiona and Lip would kill me if they found out."  
"Then don't tell them!" Ian is up in a second. "Look, Carl. I would get it myself, but my face is too hot -"  
"No need to get vain."  
"Can you get me one or not?"  
He takes a deep breath. Fiona is so going to kill him, if she ever comes back sober.  
"Any preferences?"

_~break~_

He remembers that, not so long ago, Ian and him would go on morning runs together.  
It started occasionally, when they randomly met in full running outfit early in the morning, before the rest of the family had even opened one eye. First, it would dissolve into races and only last a few blocks, but with time, it would become more and more of a quiet jog.  
Carl liked it, because there was no need to talk. He'd never been much of a talker, but still there was some kind of bond between them. No need to tear up about it, though.

But then Ian had gotten more and more involved with that entire gay Jesus thing and more mornings than not, Carl had been alone. It was not like he cared if he had to run alone. He just noticed.

He doesn't know why he thinks about it now, staring at his phone, where he has already typed in the number. All he has to do is to push the dial button.  
_I__'ll__ count to ten and th__e__n I'll do it. I'll get the freaking gun. _  
He sold tons of them at school, so it's no big deal, right? Except it is, because this time it's for his brother who wants to run away.  
_If you have a gun, cops shoot you_. _Ask questions later.  
_Carl shakes his head, then he starts counting.  
He gets to four before the front door flies open and Lip walks in. Carl silently thanks his oldest brother a thousand times.

_~break~_

"I thought about it."  
"Huh?"  
They're on the front porch, both in running outfits again, and Ian is sitting next to him tying his shoes.  
Carl is already done with it and tries to calculate how much time he'll have to outrun Ian before he finishes, if he tells him the truth now.  
"I won't get you a gun."  
He doesn't know what he expected, if he thought Ian would lash out at him, or beg, but it's definitely not this.  
"I know."  
"What?"  
"I know you won't get me one."  
"Then why did you ask?"  
"Didn't cost me a thing, did it?"  
With these words, Ian gets up and hits Carl lightly in the stomach.  
"Come on, it's my last round."  
"You still planning on running?"  
They both know, he doesn't mean their morning jog.  
"Maybe."  
He doesn't get it. He just stares at Ian dumbfoundedly as he does his stretches.  
"What if I told you not to do it?"  
Ian smirks and lifts his head into his neck to face the sky.  
"Not your decision."

And suddenly, Carl gets filled up with anger. Anger at the fact that Ian had the nerve to even tell him about this stupid idea. Anger at himself, because he even considered helping and kept his mouth shut. He should have told the rest of the family as soon as Ian asked him about the damn gun.

"It's not yours, either," Carl then tells him, "Because Fiona would get sick out of worry and Lip would get angry. Debbie would call every freaking hospital in the world and Liam wouldn't understand why you'd leave him. It's not you freaking choice to make."  
He waits for a moment for Ian to react, but all he gets is a chuckle.  
"You're done? Because I really want to beat your ass today. Who knows when I'll have the chance to do that, again."

* * *

**A/N: I really hope, Carl doesn't seem too OOC. I wanted him to show some reservations about getting his convicted brother a gun/helping him run away, because he _cares _for him, but of cause Carl wouldn't share his feelings with Ian and pin it on the rest of the family in the end.**

**Next up will be "Beholding" with Debbie and Fiona. **

**Biggest question here: Would you like me to write more of these Oneshots? Tell me in a review.**


	15. Beholding (Debbie & Fiona)

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

**Special thanks to me beta **lemondrizzlecake.

* * *

**Beholding**

_Debbie & Fiona_

From afar, Fiona looks like a goddess.  
Debbie knows that as a fact, and even at times when she is close to not seeing it, she still _knows. _Like she knows that Ian's hair is red, even though when she's hugging him in front of the prison it's way darker, or how she knows how a unicorn looks like, even though she has never seen one for real.

But with Fiona, Debbie has enough memories of watching her when she was younger, and seeing it clearly: From afar, Fiona looks like a goddess.

From up close, Fiona looks like a mess.  
Debbie would never admit that she's scared, because she is too old to be scared, too independent, and she also has a little daughter that needs her. She can't allow herself to be scared anymore.

It occurs to Debbie that this is how Fiona must've felt like all these years. Not allowed to be afraid, not allowed to be broken because she had five kids to take care of. But now they're all – besides Liam – grown up and she finally can be as broken as any of them.

It's not that the Gallagher house isn't used to chaos.  
With a teenage mum, an ex-con, a recovering alcoholic, a nine-years old and a more-or-less stable bipolar under one roof, there has always been enough potential for the everyday drama to be notched up a few degrees in comparisons with other families. It has always been like that, Debbie knows that, and doesn't care, because the special Gallagher kind of fucked-up strangely makes her feel at home more than any peaceful family dinner ever could.

From afar, Fiona looks like a goddess.  
Debbie sees it when she comes home, Franny on her hip, backpack on her back, and finds Fiona sitting at the kitchen table. She has that glow around her, like she always had, and looks like a painting: colourful, proud, sublime.  
She holds on for a moment, sucks the picture in until she has the feeling that it's burned into her head, then takes the courage to face the goddess from up close.

She puts down Franny, throws the backpack on the couch and walks into the kitchen. Franny's already there, greeting Fiona by hugging her leg.  
"Hey, there, little one", Fiona says with a hoarse voice.  
Franny is already on her way back into the living room to play with her toys, but Debbie sits down next to Fiona.  
"It's freaking hot out there", she says.  
"Yeah, summer in Chicago", is all Fiona answers and Debbie takes a closer look at her.  
She's slumped in and her face is sweaty. The dark circles under her eyes and the grey colour of her cheeks speak for themselves.

"Are they done tearing the apartment building down?" Debbie asks, cause she knows Fiona walks by there every day.  
Fiona shakes her head, takes a sip from her beer and suddenly laughs.  
"What's so funny?" Debbie asks, though she's afraid of the answer.  
"I just remembered that time I had to tear down the wall Frank'd build on top of the stairs. I was really good at it. Maybe I should have asked to help taking the apartment building down. I could have helped."  
"That's weird, even for you," Debbie says.  
Fiona chuckles, then her face gets serious again.

"It's funny," she says "how the world always tricks me into thinking I might have finally made it, just to hit me in the face the next minute. It's how the world works, at least for us Gallaghers, but somehow I seem to be the only one incapable of learning."

"We're all not the best at dealing with that kinda stuff," Debbie admits. Fiona's giving her a look and gets up. She doesn't want to talk, is what Debbie gets from it.  
"Anyway," Fiona says, walking upstairs. "I finally learned to stop fighting."

_~break~_

The night they're preparing for Fiona's farewell party, Debbie comes home, packed with food, when she notices a woman in the distance. She has a trolley with her, but the way she walks reminds Debbie of something that she had almost forgotten. It takes some time until she gets it: the woman looks like a goddess. She watches her walk, until she's almost out of sight, and then suddenly realizes that it's her sister she's watching. She has her mouth open already, wanting to do something, telling her to stop, telling her goodbye, maybe an _I love you, _but she doesn't do any of those things.

Instead, she beholds the sight of Fiona the goddess as she slowly descends into the darkness, soaking in everything about her, to keep the memory close.

* * *

**A/N:**

Not very long but something that feels like a closure.

But than again, I might have some more OS stored. Would you be interessted?


End file.
